In an optical communication network, data is transmitted in the form of optical signals transmitted and received via optical waveguides. More specifically, a bidirectional optical link is used on a communication device for a bidirectional parallel optical transceiver module used in the link. The optical transceiver generates an optical signal representing data that is modulated with respect to the amplitude and/or phase and/or polarization, and then the optical signal is transmitted on an optical fiber coupled to the transceiver. Each transceiver comprises a transmitter side and a receiver side. At the transmitter side, a laser source generates the laser and an optical coupling system receives the laser and optically couples or images the light to one end of the optical fiber. The laser source is typically made from one or more laser diodes that produce light of a particular wavelength or range of wavelengths. The optical coupling system generally comprises one or more reflective elements, one or more refractive elements and/or one or more diffractive elements. At the receiver side, a photodiode detects the optical data signal transmitted on the optical fiber and converts the optical data signal into an electrical signal, which is then amplified and processed by a circuit at the receiver side to recover the data. The combination of an optical transceiver connected to each end of the optical fiber and the optical fiber itself is commonly referred to as a fiber link.
The optical transceiver used in current optical communication field is often made into a separate chip with a discrete laser driver, transimpedance amplifier, and clock data recovery unit, and then the whole optical receiving and transmission function is realized through the coupling transmission of signals between chips. However, with the increasing speed in the optical communication field, especially in optical transceiver chips used in high-speed optical fiber links (e.g., 10 Gb/s and higher), such discrete chip designs are far from meeting the needs, because of the high power consumption, slow communication speed, and poor anti-interference ability.
Therefore, there is a need for an optical transceiver chip that can operate at relatively high data rate with relatively low power consumption to solve problems in the prior art.